Boulder Valley School District focuses on elementary attendance

As the Lafayette school's family resource coordinator, she tracked excused and unexcused absences for every student, from preschool through fifth grade. She incorporates attendance goals into parent conferences, offers rewards -- including sitting at a special "restaurant-style table" at lunch -- to students with good attendance and works directly with families whose children are missing school.

In the last four years, Sanchez has improved from 57 percent to 88 percent of the school's students attending at least 92 percent of the time. Four years ago, Sanchez also had 24 percent of its students referred as truant. Now, it's down to 7 percent.

"All families want the best for their children," Randall said. "We use that to really impact attendance. When families know more, they do more. It's shifting the whole culture of the school, that we really value on-time attendance."

The Boulder Valley School District began to look more closely at truancy at the elementary school level in 2007. Then, in 2010, the district received a grant to hire more staff members, going from one attendance advocate to three.

Improving attendance is part of the district's overall effort to reduce drop-outs -- research shows that attendance, starting as early as kindergarten, is a strong predictor of future school success.

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"We wanted to focus on younger students before they got into bad habits," said Michele DeBerry, Boulder Valley's director of athletics, activities, attendance and discipline. "We can't educate kids who aren't there."

Truancy symptom of bigger problems

Boulder Valley has about 840 open truancy cases. Students are considered truant when they have the equivalent of four days of unexcused absences in a month, or 10 days unexcused in a year.

About 40 percent of the truant students are Latino, compared with 17 percent districtwide, and 21 percent qualify for special education services, compared with 10 percent districtwide. About half the truant students qualify for federally subsidized lunches, compared with 19 percent of students districtwide.

Of the district's truant students, 161 are in elementary school.

"Truancy is just a symptom of bigger problems," said attendance advocate Christina Saurez. "Families often need extra support."

Hedy Chang, director of the national Attendance Works initiative, said students who are chronically absent in kindergarten and third grade are significantly less likely to be reading at grade level by third grade.

"Attendance is one of the very earliest measures we have if kids are getting the time and opportunity to learn in the classroom," she said. "If kids miss too much school, for any reason, it hurts their academic performance. It's particularly challenging for low-income kids in the early grades, who depend more on the school to learn how to read."

She said parents may not know the importance of school attendance, especially for kindergartners. Transportation may be a problem, or there may be health issues because of lack of access to health care. Others don't have stable living situations.

In Boulder Valley, the attendance advocates get a weekly report of students who missed more than a day in a week that's unexcused. They also flag any elementary student missing more than five days in the second semester of the school year. If a student's attendance drops below 80 percent, they're referred to the truancy advocates.

A few days missed means a letter home that emphasizes the importance of good attendance. After missing eight or more days, a more serious warning letter noting the legal requirements for school attendance goes out. The next steps are an attendance contract, finding out more about what's going on with the family and setting up mediation sessions with a court-appointed mediator.

If the student's attendance doesn't improve, truancy court is the final step.

"A court referral is really our last intervention," DeBerry said.

Truancy court judge has range of options

About 150 of Boulder Valley's truancy cases are in the court system.

Once the cases go to court, Boulder County Judge Ingrid Bakke has a variety of options, including requiring parents to attend school with their child or requiring students to attend after-school tutoring or summer school. In a recent case, she took away a girl's cell phone to remove distractions and motivate her to attend class to earn it back.

She also can order monitoring through BEST, a Boulder County program that provides community supervision services.

Other common orders include an evaluation for substance abuse problems and individual or family therapy. Students who aren't finding success at a large comprehensive high school are encouraged -- or, in some cases, ordered -- to try an alternative school.

If students don't comply with court orders, they can be sentenced to up to 45 days in juvenile detention. Parents who don't comply can be sentenced to up to 60 days in county jail. Another option is sentencing a truant to serve on the county's work crew or to perform community service.

For students who are doing well, there are gift cards to places like Target and Chipotle.

On a recent day in truancy court, the youngest was a first-grader.

The boy's mom had granted temporary custody to a friend, but then left with her son, taking him out of school. She eventually brought him back, giving temporary custody to another friend, who lives in Black Hawk. He missed 25 days of school in the second semester of the school year.

The friend with temporary custody appeared in court, asking for advice on getting a more permanent custody order before the current one expired at the end of the school year.

District officials said the boy was pulled out of a Denver elementary school as a kindergartner in March and not enrolled in Boulder Valley as a first-grader until October. The principal at the boy's school described him as "a bright young man with a great attitude" but was concerned that he was falling behind because of so many missed days.

Judge Bakke ordered that the mother be tracked down and served personally with a court summons, and she encouraged the temporary guardian to apply for emergency custody in Gilpin County.

In other cases, parents said they had done all they could to get their children to go to school and appealed to the judge for help.

One mom said she makes sure her son is at school every day. But once there, he skips most of his classes, missing a staggering 245 classes this school year. He told the judge he skips "the classes that I don't know anything, that I don't understand."

Another parent, a single mom, said she recently got a job and can't be home every morning to make sure her sixth-grade daughter walks the short distance to her Lafayette middle school. The judge told the girl she needs to go to class and agreed to allow the mom to set up a phone conference for the next court appearance so she wouldn't lose her job.

A 15-year-old runaway living at Arapahoe House, a drug rehabilitation center, missed an entire year of school. She asked to try Boulder Prep, a small Boulder Valley charter school with the flexibility to allow her to make up missing credits more quickly.

Several of the students are skipping school to smoke pot; others have issues with alcohol. One girl's mother said she has such severe anxiety attacks that she usually can't get her to leave the house, much less spend a day at school.

Judge Bakke sentenced several students to summer school to make up credits and get them back in a school environment.

"You've got to get in that habit of attending school full-time," she told a Boulder High student. "If it's a habit, it's a lot easier."

Alternative schools draw back students

Shannon Elmarr, a junior at Boulder Prep who lives in Longmont, ended up in truancy court while at Centaurus High School.

He said he "never really got into school" and, once he started high school, found most of his classes couldn't hold his interest. Having eight classes a day also was stressful, he said, and he started ditching.

"My parents were always dropping me off," he said. "I would just go in the front door and out the back door."

He started working with a truancy advocate through mediation, getting help with some family issues. But he kept ditching, ending up before a judge in court. The threat of jail time was a big motivator, he said. So was hearing the stories of the other students in court.

"I realized I could actually change and go on a better path," he said.

He enrolled at Boulder Prep and found a school that fit.

"I went from ditching all my classes to actually going to all my classes," he said. "I love it here. It works a lot better for me than any other school."

Andre Adeli, headmaster at Boulder Prep and a former public defender who co-founded the school, is a regular at truancy court hearings, providing information on student progress and offering to help those new to truancy court and looking for an alternative.

He said he would like to see more collaboration and bridges between the school district and the criminal justice system.

"The court, its whole structure is set up to enforce," he said. "It's not necessarily an empowerment mechanism."

Students who have been out of school for a long time or have challenging personal problems have the option of easing back in through independent study -- reading a book and writing an essay on it, for example.

He sees students who give up because they're struggling as well as gifted students who aren't learning fast enough.

"Students after awhile don't separate school and education," he said. "They don't feel like they're learning, so they stop going."

He said sometimes students just want a clean slate. For others, a small school -- where there's not the drama that can be part of a larger school -- and small classes that allow for more individual attention is what's needed.

"The whole perspective I come to students with is that you choose to come here," he said. "You have to choose where you're going to get your education. Interest and buy-in is a key piece."

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